EP REVIEW - Psych 2.06

[pookaseraph]

What: Episode Review
Which: Psych 2.06 - Meat is Murder but Murder is also Murder
Who: PookaSeraph
Rating: A-
Warning: Please don't lick the mushrooms

Comments

[auntie_climatic]

Shawn: Lassy-Face, what happened to your arm?
Lassiter (looking shifty): I don't want to talk about it.

Tim Omundson continues to rock my freaking life. Seriously, how perfect was his delivery of that line?

I've seen comments on how Gus and Shawn are so mean to each other and here's my two cents.

Shawn and Gus seem to have one of those unique friendships. These types of friendship don't occur often. To get to the place Gus and Shawn are at they would have had to see each other at their absolute worst - we're taking emotionally painful, teenage awkwardness, bitchy, angsty worst. Something happens between people when they go through experiences like that together, and it's very hard to explain.

Most of us have had someone we love leave us. We may have had a falling out with a friend, abandonment by a parent, death, whatever. When that happens part of us is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. We meet someone and part of us subconiously goes, "I really like this guy, but how close do I want to let him/her into my life when he's going to leave anyway. And if he/she knows what a freak I am than he/she'll really leave." But with a friend like Gus, who probably saw Shawn go through all sorts of emotional issues seeming from his gift and his father's abuse of that gift, it creates a comfort zone.

You know that if this person has stayed by you through you absolute worst then there's nothing you can do to make them leave you. It's kind of a cross between marriage and a sibling relationship. You love each other and would go to hell and back for each other, and - although this goes unsaid - you both know this.

This knowledge gives you freedom. You can be absolute asses to each other and get away with it. For example, in that stupid trust game where one person's blindfolded and the other person leads them around two friends with Gus and Shawn's relationship would delight in banging each other into as many things as possible. You can do this because you have the understanding between each other that yes, I'm going to direct you into a wall right know, but I'll protect you from anyone else who tries to smack you into a wall.

Does that make any sense? Probably not. My basic point is Gus and Shawn aren't being deliberately cruel or manipulative, they just in a different type of friend zone.

[pookaseraph]

I think the thing that you really have to consider about Shawn and Gus is that they really probably haven't been there much for each other since high school.

Shawn has had 57+ jobs since high school that's an average of one job a quarter and many of them seen to have taken place not in Santa Barbara. Gus and Shawn's relationship seems based on a high school friendship that turned into a postcard sending friendship over the years. It seems like Gus rarely saw Shawn for more than a few months at a time.

Now it has been over a year with Shawn at the same job and Gus and Henry are probably starting to wonder what the hell is up with Shawn and when he's going to run away.

I'm not positive there has been enough backstory to say for sure that Shawn and Gus have had that sort of intensity of their relationship to make the claim. I also don't think there is a lot of good evidence for Shawn really losing anyone. I think his mother is probably still alive. Shawn has the sort of reaction to death that people only have if they've never really been hit by it themselves. He doesn't have the emotional awareness to realize exactly how much pain or death hurts other people.

I know that boys sometimes are really frigging mean to each other ... I'm saying it's been above and beyond lately.